When terrible events or experiences happen in our lives, trauma is the emotional response that happens in our bodies. This could be a physical trauma such as a car accident, a natural disaster, physical abuse, or a rape. There is also emotional trauma that can be caused by neglect, humiliation, emotional abuse, and grief.
Our bodies are hardwired to react to dangerous situations one of three ways: fight, flight, or freeze/submit. These instincts keep us safe by essentially shutting down our thinking process and moving us straight to take action that will preserve our lives.
For example, if you are hiking and suddenly see a bear, you would not stop to think, “I wonder how long it has been since that bear has eaten?” You would either hold very still (freeze) and hope that the bear would not see you, run for your vehicle (flee), or if the bear attacked, you would fight for your life.
These instincts are good, but sometimes don’t serve us well in the long term. Traumatic memories get stored in our bodies and our brains when not processed properly. When this happens, the body can get triggered by seemingly unrelated things.
Triggers can cause extreme physical responses that we don’t understand and can’t control such as sweating, shaking, elevated heartrate, and difficulty breathing. Your body believes that you are in danger and goes into high alert. Your brain stops some of its normal function, such as rational thought, to deal with the threat.
This becomes a problem when a person finds themselves in a situation that is not dangerous, but their body still reacts. For example, the sound of fireworks may trigger a soldier just returning from the war. He may find himself hyper-vigilant because in the war there literally was danger around every corner, but now he is having trouble adjusting to regular life.
What is PTSD?
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a type of anxiety disorder which you may develop after being involved in, or witnessing, traumatic events.
The situations we find traumatic can vary from person to person. There are many different harmful or life-threatening events that might cause someone to develop PTSD. For example:
Being raped or sexually assaulted
being violently attacked
being involved in a car crash
being abused, harassed, or bullied
being kidnapped or held hostage
seeing other people hurt or killed, including in the course of your job
doing a job where you repeatedly see distressing images or hear details of traumatic events
traumatic childbirth, either as a mother or a partner witnessing a traumatic birth
extreme violence or war, including military combat
surviving a terrorist attack
surviving a natural disaster, such as flooding, pandemic, or an earthquake
being diagnosed with a life-threatening condition
losing someone close to you in particularly upsetting circumstances
learning that traumatic events have affected someone close to you (sometimes called secondary trauma)
any event in which you fear for your life or felt unsafe
Secondary trauma
If you experience symptoms of PTSD while supporting someone close to you who has experienced trauma, this is sometimes known as ‘secondary trauma’ or ‘secondary traumatic stress’.
‘Secondary’ means that although the original (primary) trauma happened to someone else, the impact it is having in your life is traumatic for you. It does not mean it’s any less significant than any other kind of PTSD, or any easier to deal with.
Repeatedly witnessing or hearing about traumatic events in the course of your job is also sometimes called 'secondary trauma', although this experience is increasingly thought of by professionals as an original (primary) trauma.
Are some people more at risk of PTSD?
Some factors may make you more vulnerable to developing PTSD, or may make the problems you experience more severe, including:
experiencing repeated trauma
getting physically hurt or feeling pain
having little or no support from friends, family, or community
dealing with extra stress at the same time, such as bereavement or financial worries
previously experiencing anxiety & depression
Anyone can experience traumatic events, but you may be particularly likely to have experienced trauma if you:
work in a high-risk occupation - emergency services such as first responders, healthcare workers, or armed forces
are a refugee or asylum seeker
were ever taken into foster care
EMDR – What is it?
EMDR, as with most therapy approaches, focuses on the individual's present concerns. EMDR's approach, however, considers past experiences that are being activated by present or future anticipated experiences. Frequently, just talking about your problems is not enough.
EMDR's processing helps break through the blocks that are keeping you from living an adaptive, emotionally healthy life.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a psychotherapy that enables people to move on from emotional distress and other problems that are the result of disturbing life experiences.
Repeated studies show that by using EMDR therapy people can experience the benefits of psychotherapy that once took years to make a difference. It is widely assumed that severe emotional pain requires a long time to heal. EMDR therapy shows that the mind can in fact heal from psychological trauma much as the body recovers from physical trauma.
When you cut your hand, your body works to close the wound. If a foreign object or repeated injury irritates the wound, it festers and causes pain. Once the block is removed, healing resumes.
EMDR therapy demonstrates that a similar sequence of events occurs with mental processes. The brain naturally wants to be healthy and does what it can to achieve that. If your brain is imbalanced or it’s natural healing methods are blocked by a traumatic event, the results can cause extreme suffering. Once the block is removed, healing resumes.
Using the detailed protocols and procedures learned in EMDR therapy training sessions, clinicians help clients activate their natural healing processes.
More than 30 positive controlled outcome studies have been done on EMDR therapy. Some of the studies show that 84%-90% of single-trauma victims no longer have post-traumatic stress disorder after only three 90-minute sessions. Another study, funded by the HMO Kaiser Permanente, found that 100% of the single-trauma victims and 77% of multiple trauma victims no longer were diagnosed with PTSD after only six 50-minute sessions.
In another study, 77% of combat veterans were free of PTSD in 12 sessions. There has been so much research on EMDR therapy that it is now recognized as an effective form of treatment for trauma and other disturbing experiences by organizations such as the American Psychiatric Association, the World Health Organization and the Department of Defense.
Given the worldwide recognition as an effective treatment of trauma, you can easily see how EMDR therapy would be effective in treating the “everyday” memories that are the reason people have low self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, and all the myriad problems that bring them in for therapy.
Over 100,000 clinicians throughout the world use the therapy. Millions of people have been treated successfully over the past 25 years.
EMDR therapy is an eight-phase treatment. Eye movements (or other bilateral stimulation) are used during one part of the session. After the clinician has determined which memory to target first, he asks the client to hold different aspects of that event or thought in mind and to use his eyes to track the therapist’s hand as it moves back and forth across the client’s field of vision.
As this happens, for reasons believed by a Harvard researcher to be connected with the biological mechanisms involved in Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, internal associations arise, and the clients begin to process the memory and disturbing feelings.
In successful EMDR therapy, the meaning of painful events is transformed on an emotional level. For instance, a rape victim shifts from feeling horror and self-disgust to holding the firm belief that, “I survived it and I am strong.”
Unlike talk therapy, the insights clients gain in EMDR therapy result not so much from clinician interpretation, but from the client’s own accelerated intellectual and emotional processes.
The net effect is that clients conclude EMDR therapy feeling empowered by the very experiences that once debased them. Their wounds have not just closed, they have transformed.
As a natural outcome of the EMDR therapeutic process, the clients’ thoughts, feelings, and behavior are all robust indicators of emotional health and resolution—all without speaking in detail or doing homework used in other therapies.
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